THE HEIGHTS
Then with one swift intention the sun broke through,—and there were the heights!... directly in front of him. The rest of the way was enchanted. All its difficulties were illusions. They vanished as he approached.
His Wall Street enemies were scattered in the night. It was as he had said. They had been unable to destroy him and they did not dare carry the fight any further for fear of involving themselves in ruin. His amazing counter stroke, delivered at the very moment when their utmost effort had failed, threw them into a panic. It took the stock market out of their hands and turned it squarely against them. The conspiracy was not abandoned. It collapsed. After that it was every man for himself, with the fear of Galt in his heart.
The penitential procession started early the next day. Those who had deserted him returned with gestures of humility, begging to be chastised and forgiven. The vanquished sat patiently in his outer office, bearing tokens of amity and proposals of alliance. For he was Galt, the one, unique and indestructible.
He treated the spectacle as it deserved, cynically, with a saving salt of humor.
“They make their beds fast,” he said.
Among the first to come was one of Bullguard’s partners,—a peasant-minded, ingratiating person whose use to Bullguard was his ability to face the devil smirk for smirk. His errand was to say that Bullguard & Co. would entertain any reasonable offer for the purchase of their minority interest in Orient & Pacific shares, and if they could be of service to Mr. Galt at any time, why, etc., he had only to oblige them by letting them know how. Galt was cool as to the services, etc., but he made an offer for the minority Orient & Pacific shares which was accepted a few hours later. That was Bullguard’s way of declaring war at an end. It was the grand salute.
Horace Potter was the only man who never came back. He could not sneak back and there was no other way. They had mortally wounded each other’s pride.
Meanwhile Congress, like the old woman of the story book, heavy-footed, slow to be amazed, always late but never never, heard of Galt, became much alarmed and solemnly resolved to investigate him. He was summoned to appear before a Committee of the House with all his papers and books. The Committee felt incompetent to conduct the examination. Finance is a language politicians must not know. It is not the language of the people. So it engaged counsel,—a notorious lawyer named Samuel Goldfuss.
He was a man who knew all the dim and secret pathways of the law, and charged Wall Street clients enormous fees for leading them past the spirit to the letter. He charged them more when he caught them alone in the dark, or lost in the hands of a bungling guide, for then he could threaten to expose them to the light if they declined to accept his saving services at his own price. Having got very rich by this profession he put his money beyond reach of the predacious and became public spirited, or pretended to have done so, and proceeded to sell out Satan to the righteous. It became his avocation to plead the cause of people against mammon, and where or whensoever a malefactor of great wealth was haled to court or brought to appear before a committee of Congress, Goldfuss thrust himself in to act as prosecuting attorney, with or without fees; and his name was dread to any such, for he knew their devious ways and all the wickedness that had ever been practiced in or about the Stock Exchange. His motives were never quite understood. Some said he attended to Satan’s business still, never sold him out completely, but put the hounds on the wrong scent by some subtle turn at the end. Others said his motive was to terrorize the great malefactors so that when they were in trouble he could extort big fees simply for undertaking not to appear on the people’s side.
And this sinister embodiment of public opinion was the man whom Galt was to face, who had never before faced public opinion in any manner at all. It was likely to be a stiff ordeal. Counsel warned him accordingly.
“I’ve got a straight story to tell,” he said. “I don’t need any help.”
However, they insisted on standing by. We arrived in Washington one hot August morning, left all our eminent counsel in their favorite hotel, and went empty handed to the Capitol, where neither of us had been before. We wandered about for half an hour, trying to find the place where the Committee sat. It was a special Committee with no room of its own. We were directed at last to the Rivers and Harbors Committee room. It was full of smoke, electric fans and men in attitudes of waiting. Six, looking very significant, sat around a long table covered with green cloth. Others to the number of thirty or forty sat on chairs against the walls. At a smaller table were the reporters with reams of paper in front of them.
“Is this the Committee that wants to see Henry M. Galt?” he asked, standing on the threshold.
“It is,” said the man at the head of the table. He was the chairman. He sat with one leg over the arm of his chair, his back to the door, and did not turn or so much as move a hair. He spoke in that loud, disembodied voice which makes the people’s business seem so impressive to the multitude and glared at us through the back of his head.
“I am that person,” said Galt.
“You have delayed us a quarter of an hour,” said the chairman, still with his back to us.
“You were hard to find,” said Galt, very simply, looking about for a place to sit. A chair was placed for him at the opposite end of the table. There was no place for me, so I stood a little aside. Goldfuss, whom I had never seen and had not yet identified, sat beside the chairman. They had their heads together, whispering. The chairman spoke.
“The question is raised as to whether witness may be permitted to appear with counsel. It is decided in the negative. Counsel will be excused.”
Silence. Nothing happened.
“Counsel will be excused,” said the chairman again.
Still nothing happened.
“If you are talking at me,” said Galt, “I have no counsel. I didn’t bring any,—that is, I left them at the hotel.”
“Who is the gentleman with you?” the chairman asked.
“Oh,” said Galt, looking at me. “That’s all right. He’s my secretary. He doesn’t know any more law than I do.”
There was a formal pause. The official stenographer leaned toward Galt, speaking quietly, and took his name, age, address and occupation. The chairman said, “Proceed.”
Goldfuss poised himself for theatrical effect. He was a small, body-conscious man with a coarse, loose skin, very close shaven, powdered, sagging at the jowls; a tiny wire mustache, unblinking blue eyes close together and a voice like the sound of a file in the teeth of a rusty saw.
“So this is the great Galt,” he said, sardonically, slowly bobbing his head.
“And you,” said Galt, “are the Samuel Goldfuss who once tried to blackmail me for a million dollars.”
Oh, famous beginning! The crowd was tense with delight.
Goldfuss, looking aggrieved and disgusted, turned to the chairman, saying: “Will the Committee admonish the witness?”
The chairman took his leg down, carefully relighted a people’s cigar, and said: “Strike that off the record.... I will inform the witness that this is a Committee of Congress, with power to punish contumacious and disrespectful conduct.... The witness is warned to answer questions without any irrelevant remarks of his own.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Galt. “What was the question?”
The official stenographer read from his notes,—“So this is the great Galt.”
“That ain’t a question,” said Galt.
The round was his. The audience tittered. The chairman put his leg back and glared wearily into space.
“I withdraw it,” said Goldfuss. “Start the record new from here.... Mr. Galt, you were directed to produce before this Committee all your books and papers. Have you brought them?”
“No.”
“No? Why not, please?”
“They would fill this whole room,” said Galt.
Mr. Goldfuss started again.
“Your occupation, Mr. Galt,—you said it was what?”
“Farmer,” said Galt.
“Yes? What do you farm?”
“The country,” said Galt.
“Do you consider that a nice expression?”
“Nicest I know, depending on how you take it,” said Galt.
“Well, now tell this Committee, please, how you farm the country, using your own expression.”
“I fertilize it,” said Galt. “I sow and reap, improve the soil and keep adding new machinery and buildings.”
“What do you fertilize it with, Mr. Galt?”
“Money.”
“What do you sow, Mr. Galt?”
“More money.”
“Profit.”
“A great deal of that?”
“Plenty,” said Galt.
“And what do you do with the profit, Mr. Galt?”
“Sow it again.”
“A lovely parable, Mr. Galt. Is it not true, however, that you are also a speculator?”
“Yes, that’s true,” said Galt.
“To put it plainly, is it not true that you are a gambler?”
“That’s part of my trade,” said Galt. “Every farmer is a gambler. He gambles in weather, worms, bugs, acts of Congress and the price of his produce.”
“You gamble in securities, Mr. Galt?”
“Yes.”
“In the securities of the railroad properties you control?”
“Heavily,” said Galt.
“If, for example, you are going to increase the dividend on Great Midwestern stock you first go into the market and buy it for a rise,—buy it before either the public or the other stockholders know that you are going to increase the dividend?”
“That’s the case,” said Galt.
“As a matter of fact, you did some time ago increase the dividend on Great Midwestern from four to eight per cent., and the stock had a big rise for that reason. Tell this Committee, please, when and how and at what prices you bought the stock in anticipation of that event?”
“In anticipation of that eight per cent. dividend,” said Galt reminiscently, “I began to buy Great Midwestern stock ... let me see ... nine years ago at ten dollars a share. It went down, and I bought it at five dollars a share, at two dollars, at a dollar-and-a-half. The road went into the hands of a receiver, and I stuck to it. I bought it all the way up again, at fifteen dollars a share, at fifty dollars, at a hundred-and-fifty, and I’m buying still.”
Goldfuss was bored. He seemed to be saying to the audience: “Well, so much for fun. Now we get down to the hard stuff.” He took time to think, stirred about in his papers and produced a certain document.
“Mr. Galt, I show you a certified list of the investments of the Security Life Insurance Company. You are a director of that institution, are you not?”
“Yes.”
“You used some of your farming profits to buy a large interest in the Security Life Insurance Company?”
“Yes.”
“You are chairman of its finance committee?”
“Yes.”
“In fact, Mr. Galt, you control the investments of the Security Life. You recommend what securities the policy holders’ money shall be invested in and your suggestions are acted upon. Is that true?”
“Something like that,” said Galt.
“Now, Mr. Galt, look at this certified statement, please. The investments amount to more than four hundred millions. I call your attention to the fact that nearly one quarter of that enormous total consists of what are known as Galt securities, that is, the stocks and bonds of railroad companies controlled by Henry M. Galt. Is that correct?”
“Substantially,” said Galt.
“Did you, as chairman of the finance committee of the Security Life, recommend the purchase of those securities?”
“Yes.”
“And at the same time, as head of the Great Midwestern railway system, you were interested in selling those securities, were you not?”
“We need a great deal of capital,” said Galt. “We are selling new securities all the time. We sell all we can and wish we could sell more. There is always more work to do than we can find the money for.”
“So, Mr. Galt, it comes to this: As head of a great railroad system you create securities which you are anxious to sell. In that rôle you are a seller. Then as chairman of the finance committee of the Security Life Insurance Company, acting as trustee for the policy holders, you are a buyer of securities. In that position of trust, with power to say how the policy holders’ money shall be invested, you recommend the purchase of securities in which you are interested as a seller. Is that true?”
“I don’t like the way you put it, but let it stand,” said Galt.
“How can you justify that, Mr. Galt? Is it right, do you think, that a trustee should buy with one hand what he sells with the other?”
Galt leaned over, beating the table slowly with his fist.
“I justify it this way,” he said. “I know all about the securities of the Great Midwestern. I don’t know of anything better for the Security Life to put its money into. If you can tell me of anything better I will advise the finance committee at its next meeting to sell all of its Great Midwestern stuff and buy that, whatever it is. I’ll do more. If you can tell me of anything better I will sell all of my own Great Midwestern stocks and bonds and buy that instead. I have my own money in Great Midwestern. There’s another Galt you left out. As head of a great railway system I am a seller of securities to investors all over the world. That is how we find the capital to build our things. But as an individual I am a buyer of those same securities. I sell to everybody with one hand and buy for myself all that I can with the other hand. Do you see the point? I buy them because I know what they are worth. I recommend them to the Security Life because I know what they are worth. That is how I justify it, sir.”
Enough of that. Goldfuss had meant to go from the Security Life to each of the other financial institutions controlled by Galt, meaning to show how he had been unloading Galt securities upon them. But what was the use? What could he do with an answer like that? He passed instead to the Orient & Pacific matter. Galt admitted that he had used the power of majority stockholder to make the property subservient to the Great Midwestern because that was the efficient thing to do.
“And that, you think, is a fair way to treat minority stockholders?” Goldfuss asked.
“We were willing at any time to buy them out at the market price,” said Galt. “However, that’s now an academic matter. The Great Midwestern has acquired all that minority interest in Orient & Pacific.”
This was news. There was a stir at the reporters’ table. Several rose and went out to telegraph Galt’s statement to Wall Street, where nobody yet knew how Bullguard & Co. had made peace with him.
So they went from one thing to another. They came to that notorious land transaction on account of which he had been sued.
“We needed that land for an important piece of railroad development,” said Galt. “Some land traders got wind of our plans, formed a syndicate, bought up all the ground around, and then tried to make us buy it through the nose. We simply sat tight until they went broke. Then we took it off their hands. There was more than the Great Midwestern needed because they were hogs. The Great Midwestern took what it wanted and I took the rest. The directors knew all about it.”
“And it was very profitable to you personally, this outcome?”
“Incidentally it was,” said Galt. “Somebody would get it. It fell into my hands. What would you have done?”
“Strike that off the record,—‘What would you have done?’” said Goldfuss. “Counsel is not being examined.”
After lunch he took a new line.
“Mr. Galt,” he asked, “what are you worth?”
“I don’t know,” said Galt.
“You don’t know how rich you are?”
“No.”
Goldfuss lay back in his chair with an exaggerated air of astonishment.
“But you will admit you are very rich?” he said, having recovered slowly.
“Yes,” said Galt. “I suppose I am.”
“Well, as briefly as possible, will you tell this Committee how you made it?”
“Now you’ve asked me something,” said Galt, leaning forward again. “I’ll tell you. I made it buying things nobody else wanted. I bought Great Midwestern when it was bankrupt and people thought no railroad was worth its weight as junk. When I took charge of the property I bought equipment when it was cheap because nobody else wanted it and the equipment makers were hungry, and rails and ties and materials and labor to improve the road with, until everybody thought I was crazy. When the business came we had a railroad to handle it. I’ve done that same thing with every property I have taken up. No railroad I’ve ever touched has depreciated in value. I’m doing it still. You may know there has been an upset in Wall Street recently, a panic in fact. Everybody is uneasy and business is worried because a financial disturbance has always been followed by commercial depression. There are signs of that already. But we’ll stop it. In the next twelve months the Great Midwestern properties will spend five hundred million dollars for double tracking, grade reductions, new equipment and larger terminals.”
This was news. Again there was a stir at the reporters’ table as several rose to go out and flash Galt’s statement to Wall Street.
“Mr. Galt,” said Goldfuss, “do you realize what it means for one man to say he will spend five hundred millions in a year? That is half the national debt.”
“I know exactly what it means,” said Galt. “It means for once a Wall Street panic won’t be followed by unemployment and industrial depression. Our orders for materials and labor now going out will start everything up again at full speed. Others will act on our example. You’ll see.”
“You will draw upon the financial institutions you control, the Security Life and others, for a good deal of that money,—the five hundred millions?”
“You get the idea,” said Galt. “That’s what financial institutions are for. There’s no better use for their money.”
“You have great power, Mr. Galt.”
“Some,” he said.
“If it goes on increasing at this rate you will soon be the economic dictator of the country.”
No answer.
“I say you will be the economic dictator of the whole country.”
“I heard you say it,” said Galt. “It ain’t a question.”
“But do you think it desirable that one man should have so much power,—that one man should run the country?”
“Somebody ought to run it,” said Galt.
“Is it your ambition to run it?”
“It is my idea,” said Galt, “that the financial institutions of the country,—I mean the insurance companies and the banks,—instead of lending themselves out of funds in times of high prosperity ought then to build up great reserves of capital to be loaned out in hard times. That would keep people from going crazy with prosperity at one time and committing suicide at another time. But they won’t do it by themselves. Somebody has to see to it,—somebody who knows not only how not to spend money when everybody is wild to buy, but how to spend it courageously when there is a surplus of things that nobody else wants. Every financial institution that I have anything to do with will be governed by that idea, and the Great Midwestern properties, while I run them, will decrease their capital expenditures as prices rise and increase them as prices fall. When we show them the whole trick and how it pays everybody will do it. We won’t have any more depressions and Coxey’s armies. We won’t have any more unemployment. In a country like this unemployment is economic lunacy.”
The hearing continued for three days. The newspapers printed almost nothing else on their first three pages. Galt’s testimony produced everywhere a monumental effect. Public opinion went over by a somersault.
He denied nothing. He admitted everything. He was invincible because he believed in himself.
“Mr. Galt,” said Goldfuss, rising, “that will be all. You are the most remarkable witness I have ever examined.”
They shook hands all around.
As we were going down the Capitol steps Galt stumbled and clutched my arm. The sustaining excitement was at an end and the reaction was sudden. Solicitude made him peevish. He insisted irritably, and we went on walking, though it was above his strength. When we were half way back to the hotel, a mile yet to go, he stopped and said: “You’re right, Coxey. Ain’t it hot! Let’s call a cab.”
He wouldn’t rest. A strange uneasiness was upon him. We took the next train for New York.
“I want to go to Moonstool,” he said. The idea seized him after we were aboard the train.
“Fine. Let’s take a holiday tomorrow and go all over it,” I said.
“Now. I want to go there now,” he said.
“Directly there ... and not go home?”
“That’s home, ain’t it?” he said, becoming irritable. “Let’s go straight there.”
He had a fixation upon it.
From Baltimore I got off an urgent telegram to Mrs. Galt, telling her Galt was very tired and insisted on going directly to the country place. Could she meet us at Newark with a motor car? That would be the easiest way.
Automobiles were just then coming into general use. Galt with his ardent interest in all means of mechanical locomotion was enthusiastic about them. The family had four, besides Natalie’s, which was her own. She drove it herself.
Mrs. Galt met us at Newark. Galt greeted her with no sign of surprise. He could not have been expecting her. I had told him nothing about the arrangements. He slept all the way up from Washington and did not know where we were when we got off the train. She helped him into the car. When they were seated he took her hand and went to sleep again.
There was a second motor behind us, with a cook, three servants, some luggage and provisions. Mrs. Galt was a very efficient woman. She had thought of everything the situation required.
It was nearly midnight when we arrived at Moonstool and stopped in front of the iron gates. They were closed and locked. And there was Natalie who had been sent ahead to announce our coming. She drove out alone, got lost on the way, and had not yet succeeded in raising anybody when we came up. The place was dark, except for red lanterns here and there on piles of construction material. The outside watchmen were shirking duty, and those inside, if not doing likewise, were beyond hearing.
Nearby was the railroad station of Galt, a black little pile with not a light anywhere. It had not yet been opened for use. We could hear the water spilling over the private Galt dam in the river. There was enough electricity in the Galt power house to illuminate a town. On the mountain top, half a mile distant, the Galt castle stood in massive silhouette against the starry sky. And here was Galt, in the dark, an unwelcome night-time stranger, forbidden at the gate. He was still asleep. We were careful not to wake him.
A watchman with a bull’s eye lantern and a billy stick exuded from the darkness.
“Wha’d’ye want?”
We wanted to go in.
“Y’can’t go in,” he said. “Can’t y’ see it’s private? Nobody lives there.”
It is very difficult to account for the improbable on the plane of a night watchman’s intelligence. First he stolidly disbelieved us. Then he took refuge in limited responsibility.
“M’orders is t’let nobody in,” he said. “D’ye know anybody aroun’ here?”
It seemed quite possible that no human being around here would know us. By an inspiration Natalie remembered the superintendent of construction. He lived not far away. She knew where. Once when she was spending a day on the job he had taken her home with him to lunch. It was not more than ten minutes’ drive, she said.
It was further than she thought. We were more than three quarters of an hour returning with the superintendent. It took twenty minutes more to wake the crew at the power house and get the electricity turned on. Then we drove slowly up the main concrete road now lighted on each side by clusters of three ground glass globes in fluted columns fifty feet apart. Although it was finished the road was still cluttered with heaps of sand and debris.
Galt all this time was fast asleep, his head resting on Mrs. Galt’s shoulder. We could scarcely wake him when we tried. He seemed drunk with weariness. As we helped him out he opened his eyes once and startled us by saying to the superintendent: “Fire that watchman ... down below,” as if he had been conscious of everything that happened. His eyes closed again, he tottered, and we caught him. The superintendent supported him on one side, I on the other, and so he entered, dragging his feet.
Natalie knew more about the house than anyone else. She led the way to the apartment that was Galt’s, and then left us to place the servants and show them their way around. I helped Mrs. Galt undress him and get him to bed. I was amazed to see how thin and shrunken his body was. He was inert, like a child asleep. Mrs. Galt, very pale, was strong and deft.
“We must have a doctor at once,” she said. “I thought of bringing one and then didn’t because he minds so awfully to have a doctor in.”
Still we were not really alarmed.
The telephone system had been installed. Natalie knew that. She knew also where the big switchboard was. I telephoned the family physician to meet us at the Hoboken ferry and then Natalie and I set out to fetch him, a drive of nearly seventy miles there and back.
“We ought to do it in two hours,” she said, as we coasted freely,—very freely,—down the lighted cement road and plunged through the gates into darkness.
“The doctor must be in his right mind when we deliver him.”
I meant it lightly. Her reckless driving was a household topic and she was incorrigible. But she answered me thoughtfully.
“We’ll make the time going.”
She pulled her gloves tighter, took the time, inspected the instruments, switched off the dash light, cut out the muffler, settled herself in the seat and opened the throttle wide. It was a four-cylinder, high-power engine. The sound we made was that of an endless rip through a linen sheet. Road side trees turned white, uneasy faces to our headlights. The highway seemed to lay itself down in front of us as we needed it; and there was a feeling that it vanished or fell away into black space behind us. Giddy things such as fences, buildings and stone walls were tossed right and left in streaming glimpses. Good motor roads were yet unbuilt. There were short, sharp grades like humps on the roller coaster at the fair. Taking them at fifty miles an hour, at night, when you cannot see the top as you start up, nor all the way down as you begin the plunge, is a wild, liberating sensation. Sense of level is lost. One’s center of gravity rises and falls momentously, the heart sloshes around, and you don’t care what happens, not even if you should run off the world. It doesn’t matter.
Natalie was in a trance-like rapture. She never spoke. Her eyes were fixed ahead; her body was static. Only her head and arms moved, sometimes her feet to slip the clutch or apply the brake. All that pertains to the pattern of consciousness,—seeing, hearing, attention, will and willing,—were strained outward beyond the windshield, as if externalized, acting outside of her. What remained on the seat, besides the thrill at the core of her, was her automatic self controlling this lunging, roaring mechanism without the slightest effort of thought. The restrained impulses of her nature apparently found their escape in this form of excitement. It was one thing she could do better than anyone else. She did it superbly and adored doing it. I could not help thinking how Vera would drive, if she drove at all.
There was no traffic at that hour of night until we fell in with the milk and truck wagons crossing the Hackensack Meadows toward the Hudson River ferries. Natalie cut in and out of that rumbling procession with skill and ease. Her calculations were tight and daring, but never foolhardy.
“Very accomplished driving,” I said, as she pulled up at the ferry with the engine idling softly.
“Fifty minutes,” she said, a little down, on looking at her watch. “I thought we should have done it in forty-five. Don’t you love it at night?”
Dawn was breaking when we returned. It gave us a start of apprehension to see the lights still burning in Galt’s apartment. We found Mrs. Galt sitting at the side of his bed. Her face was distorted with horror and anxiety. Galt lay just as I had seen him last.
“He hasn’t moved,” said Mrs. Galt. “I can’t arouse him. I’m not sure he is breathing.”
Neither was the doctor. The pulse was imperceptible. A glass held at his nostrils showed no trace of moisture. All the bodily functions were in a state of suspense. The only presumption of life lay in the general arbitrary fact that he was not dead. The doctor had never seen anything like this before. He was afraid to act with